For the past three decades, Thailand has been at or near the top of Southeast Asia’s fastest growing economies. The boom, however, has barely touched the rural Northeast, the North, nor the slums of the capital city, Bangkok.

Mozambique has seen a modest pick-up in economic growth over the past two decades, but it remains the poorest and least developed country in southern Africa, both in human rights and gender development terms.

Just over a dozen years ago a group of women from the slums of Embu, having nowhere else to turn, called on the Good Shepherd Sisters of Kenya. These women were the victims of particularly oppressive cultural practices and sexual discrimination.

Kitale is a rural town in western Kenya plagued by a high rate of poverty and illiteracy. The Turkana people are its most marginalized residents. They live in the Kipsongo slum, a community beset by famine, disease, illiteracy, abuse and child labor.